Craving for food you like to eat. There are times you like specific food or a cuisine you dream of. May it be Filipino, American, Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, French, Italian, Mexican, Thai, Vietnamese food... you have to satisfy your crave.

Thursday, September 17, 2009

Fresh Lumpia is a traditional Filipino dish. Lumpiang Sariwa, or Fresh Lumpia, are folded into a soft, crepe-like wrapper made with eggs. They contain a mixture of stir-fried ingredients, heavy on the veggies, Pork, and turnips, served with sauce and peanuts.

Fresh Lumpia Ingredients:

Filling:

1/4 kilo pork liempo, boiled and sliced

1/2 kilo shrimp, shelled

2 squares tokwa (tofu), cubed

1/2 cabbage, medium-sized, shredded

1 cup string beans, sliced diagonally

carrot, cut into thin strips

kinchay, cut lengthwise, half inch

kamote, medium-sized, cut into thin strips

lettuce leaves

3 tbsp. cooking oil

1 onion, sliced

1 garlic, crushed

peanuts, finely chopped (for garnishing)

Lumpia wrappers:

1 egg, lightly beaten

1/2 cup water

1/4 cup cornstarch

dash of salt

oil to grease frying pan

For sauce:

1 cup brown sugar

water

cornstarch

soy sauce

Seasoning:

soy sauce to taste

Fresh Lumpia Cooking Instructions:

·Saute garlic and onions. Add pork and shrimp.

·When pork and shrimp are slightly cooked, add tofu.

·Add carrots, string beans, kamote, then kinchay and cabbage. Do not overcook.

·Season to taste. Cool before wrapping.

To make lumpia wrappers: Mix egg, water, cornstarch and salt thoroughly until smooth. Take about lA of batter to make each crepe (piece of wrapper). Brush some oil on a non-stick pan. Spread the batter thinly by turning the pan around. Cook only one side of the crepe over low heat. (Don’t keep the crepe too long on the pan as it will be toasted. When it turns slightly brown or small bubbles appear on the surface, it’s cooked.) Lift crepe off using a wide spatula, and place on wax paper. Stack cooked crepes with wax paper between them.

To make sauce: Dissolve cornstarch in water and soy sauce. Put brown sugar in a saucepan. Caramelize by stirring the sugar continually until totally melted. (Don’t scorch the sugar.) Add some water and simmer until the caramel is dissolved. Add cornstarch dissolved in water and soy sauce. Stir until mixture becomes smooth and transparent.

To make lumpia: Put 2-3 tablespoons of filling in lumpia wrapper. Roll wrapper and seal. Serve with sauce and finely chopped peanuts.

Monday, September 7, 2009

The food item we call cua pao does not seem to appear in the Chinese culinary vocabulary. Yet, it appears prominently in local versions of Chinese cooking. Cua pao is the generic term for folded steamed sweet buns with filling. And whether the filling is hong ma or pata tim, we call it cua pao.

Strictly speaking, the folded steamed buns are called manthao and they are available in some supermarkets. If you want to make cua pao at home, you can cook humba (the local version of the Chinese hong ma) or, alternatively, pata tim, slice the meat and use as filling.

You’re looking at home-made cua pao above. When I discovered frozen and ready-to-steam manthao at the supermarket yesterday, my next move was to buy a slab of pork belly. Despite the appearance of cua pao, it is not difficult to make at home. Humba is a very fuss-free pork stew and so long as you don’t intend to make the buns yourself, once the stew is done, it’s really just a matter of assembling. Of course, I want to be able to make manthao from scratch someday but that’s something in my to do list as of now.

Heat the cooking oil in a wide non-stick pan. When smoking, lower the pork belly, skin side up and cook over high heat for a few minutes, without touching, until seared. How do you know it’s sufficiently seared if you don’t lift the meat to check? Me, I can tell by the smell and by the volume of the sizzling. I suggest you let the pork fry for 4 minutes before lifting and checking the underside if it has lightly browned. When it is, flip the pork over and brown the skin as well to make it puffy.

The oil will spatter — big time. If you have a screen to cover the frying pan, use it. If you only have the regular solid cover, cover the pan partially to make sure that the steam that build inside does not fall back in because that will make the pork soggy and cause even more oil spatters.

When the pork is nicely browned, just add the rest of the ingredients, pour enough water to cover three quarters of the pork, bring to the boil, then lower the heat, cover and simmer for an hour and a half to two hours or until the pork is very, very tender. Turn the pork halfway through cooking. Add more water if the sauce dries up before the pork is done.

Take the pork out of the sauce, place on a platter and cool. Meanwhile, strain the sauce and boil until reduced to about 3/4 cup.

Make the cua pao

When the pork has cooled, take the manthao out. That’s how they look. A rectangular piece of white bread folded in half and lined with paper underneath.

There’s the manthao from another angle. Just so it’s clear how they look.

So, place the manthao, in single layers, in steamer racks over simmering water. Reheat for 10 minutes or until hot and soft ans the top spring back when poked.

Place the cooled pork on a cutting board and slice as thinly as you can. Arrange on a serving platter, garnish with crushed peanuts and thinly sliced onion leaves. Pour some sauce over.

To assemble: Unfold the manthao. Place a slice of pork and a little sauce inside. Top with crushed peanuts and onion leaves, refold and serve.

You can assemble the cua pao before serving or serve the manthao, humba, additional crushed peanuts and onion leaves in separate plates and let the diner make their own cua pao.

I like this especially if you have to prepare it yourself. You can put whatever amount of humba you like in your cua pao. If given a choice between cua pao and siopao, I will definitely choose the cua pao.

Thursday, September 3, 2009

Pancit Molo Recipe is an adaptation of wonton soup, is a specialty of the town of Molo in Iloilo a well-know district in the province. Unlike other pancit, pancit molo is not dry but soupy and it does not make use of long, thin noodles but instead wonton wrappers made from rice flour. Leftover wonton wrappers can also be cut into strips and drop into the hot broth.

Pancit Molo Ingredients:

Filling:

1 cup ground pork

1/2 cup cooked chicken meat, flaked

1/4 cup water chestnuts, chopped

3 tbsp patis (fish sauce)

salt to taste

Stock:

8 cups chicken broth

1 small onion, chopped

1 clove garlic, minced

25-30 wonton wrappers

pepper to taste

chopped spring onions

oil for sauteing

Pancit Molo Cooking Instructions:

To prepare filling: Combine ingredients in a bowl but use onlly 1 tsp green onions, salt to taste, and 1 tbsp patis. Set aside the remaining ingredients for the broth.

Put 1 tbsp of the meat mixture in the center of each wonton wrapper.

Wrap by folding one side of the wrapper to cover the filling completely, then turning the “unfilled” sides of the wrapper up so that the dumpling resembles a flower. (The filled portion should be in the center.)

Cover the dumplings with a dry kitchen towel and set aside.

To make broth: – Saute onion and garlic in oil until light brown.

Add chicken stock and the remaining salt and patis from the filling.

Allow to boil, the drop the stuffed dumplings into the boiling broth.

Stir the remaing meat mixture into the broth. Simmer for 10-15 minutes.